


i could live without or with you

by PenzyRome



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: 3rd person from persephone's eyes. so lots of swearing dhsgdjshd, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken marriage, Divorce, F/M, Hospitals, Light Angst, Relationship Study, bc thats my vibe!, i think? let's say it is, let's call it that!, lot less "climate disaster", lot more "sweet fuck they're sad", no one dies I promise, or gets. eternally damned, orpheus and eurydice just wanna sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 14:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19297957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: She doesn't want to be his wife anymore, but it isn't like she can much remember life when she wasn't.





	i could live without or with you

**Author's Note:**

> hi folks! uhhh this is my first fic for hadestown that i've posted so.. i'm penzy. hi! umm let's see. modern au. the world isn't in shambles. assume that the whole "HADES UR A FUCKING EVIL OVERLORD AND UR WIFE HATES U FOR IT" "shit really???? damn...." thing had a counterpart in this au???? but is a thing of the past??? he's a lot less evil and a lot more tired. actually that's the mood for everyone. anyways. have fun. also the title's from "arms unfolding" by dodie as it has massive hades/persephone vibes

Persephone’s head hurts like a bitch before she even opens her eyes.

Then, when she actually opens them, it isn’t quite as bad as she expected.

The blinds are closed tight, and only her faint lamp is on in the corner. She praises Drunk Her in the back of her mind for sparing the briefest kind of forethought, and tries to roll over to face the door. Only then does she remember that even if her headache hasn’t progressed to Hurts Like A Motherfucker, it still hurts like a bitch, which is bad enough.

(Like A Motherfucker was only reached two times before-- the day after her wedding reception and the day after Hadestown’s opening day party. Coincidentally, the two happiest days of her life, and the two worst decisions that the fucked up pair of them ever made.)

_ “Hades,”  _ she whines, and she hears him sigh from just around the corner. Bastard.  _ “Hades!” _

He opens the door slowly, and even the lights out there are dimmer than usual. “Morning,” he says in that bitter bass of his, and she purses her lips.

“We got any aspirin?”

“Next to you.”

She turns her head, and there it is, right next to a glass of water. Preparation she certainly can’t give Drunk Her the credit for, but she still doesn’t thank him, just nods and goes up on one elbow long enough to take it. She flops back onto her pillows, the whole unnecessary poofy lot of them, and he’s still there.

She still isn’t going to  _ thank him,  _ but she might as well say something if he’s going to stand there, all silent, like some sort of marble pillar.

“Nice of ya.”

He snorts. “Still your husband, aren’t I?”

“Won’t be soon.”

“Yes, you revel in reminding me.”

As she has the right to. She’s damn proud of the papers she thrust at him months ago, done up by Mama’s divorce guy because lord knows Demeter’s been around that block once or thrice. 

They’ve discussed it, it’s a fair deal. Hades gets his  _ empire _ , the apartment built on top of it for when Persephone’s a little too pissed to sleep in the same house as him. Persephone gets the townhouse, the one thing Hades made for her that she ever really loved, and all the cars and dishes and music boxes and vases and  _ shit,  _ because she might as well fill up the husband-shaped hole with something other than booze.

They split the money. Hades gets the dogs. Persephone gets the rings. They sign their names, and then Persephone never has to be the boss’s wife ever again.

It’s both fucked and glorious, the tidy way that things will end. They spent thirty-two years trying to tough it out and clean up their mess. To glue the broken shards back together into some kind of whole. All along, she just had to sweep it up and throw it in the garbage, and now that she knows that she can, she isn’t wasting that chance.

So she thinks she has every right to rub it in his face that he tried so hard to fix them and all she had to do was take out the trash.

She still doesn’t know why neither of their signatures grace the bottoms of the pages. A fluke, probably. They keep saying they’ll do it, then forgetting. Putting a pen to paper, and then remembering there’s something else waiting for them.

They’ll sign it eventually. It’s not like there’s much marriage left anyways.

But as much as Hungover Her hates bright lights, she hates thinking more.

 

If it wasn’t for him, she’d be having a lovely night.

He’s just a bit of an asshole, one of the guys who looks older than her but is probably younger, and has that classic smarmy look on his face that makes her want to deck him clean in the nose.

She wonders if he’d look better without front teeth.

Unfortunately, though, he’s got friends, and Hermes isn’t bartending like usual. The kid in his place seems plenty sweet, but hasn’t picked up on Persephone’s tipsy  _ get me out of this  _ codes yet, so he’s useless. Which means she’s essentially stranded while this guy breathes down her neck and buys her shitty wine.

The funniest thing about it, really, is that he clearly doesn’t think she notices that it’s as cheap as it is. Wine is wine, though, so she drinks through the whole fucking bottle while the asshole blabbers on and on about his start-up.

Because men with grand aspirations of capitalistic greatness ever got her anywhere except hell.

“So how ‘bout it?” he asks, like he’s finishing a damn PowerPoint presentation and she’s a CEO. “I got a suite at the Songbird, wanna drop by?”

She nearly chokes on the very last bit of  _ his  _ wine.

“Think I’ll stick around here,” she says, and she can  _ hear  _ herself drawl the way Hades always teased her for when they were young.

He rolls his eyes. “C’mon, baby. Biggest bed you’ll ever see, room service--”

“I’m quite familiar with the amenities of my husband’s hotel,” she says.

He makes a face that tells her he’d choke on his wine if there was any left.

“No ring--” he sputters, and she smiles coyly.

“Allergic to metal.” It’s a lie, if he looked at her more than three seconds he’d know it, but men like him never look long enough to do anything other than leer.

He gapes three more seconds, and then scrambles away.

Her smile drops, and she turns back to the bartender. “Orpheus, whiskey neat, will ya?”

The kid frowns, a little, nervous thing. “I think I oughta cut you off, Miss Persephone.”  _ Miss  _ Persephone. Even when she was happy, it was never Missus.

She sighs, and somewhere in her throat it turns into a growl. “Hermes put you up to that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, still without an ounce of confidence, but she gives up anyways. It’s past midnight, the girls she saw bacheloretting outside might come in soon, and she’s got a wicked headache built up for Hungover Her anyways.

The bar’s pretty empty for now, so Orpheus stands next to her as she gathers her things and starts walking.

She notices a little late, and rolls her eyes. “I can handle myself enough to walk.” And she can, she isn’t some frail little thing that cries or falls over or gets her hand stuck in a pickle jar like certain spouses. She’s a little meaner and a little angrier, and not much else. The state of Consistent Tipsiness has done wonders for her, in that it’s hard to tell when she’s really off her ass anymore.

Still, Orpheus walks next to her and even waits with her for her cab, out of whatever gentlemanly goodness resides in his heart.

Hades would’ve just picked her up and carried her home himself, but then again, Orpheus doesn’t intend to marry her, so chivalry expectations should be a bit lower. And she doesn’t know the kid, but he doesn’t seem ready to get some hellpit scheme of a Successful Business started, either. She hopes he stays like that.

 

A few weeks later, she’s nursing two mugs, one full of coffee and the other full of a cheesy egg she cooked in the microwave, when a stack of papers gets tossed onto the table in front of her.

He’s in his work clothes, a pinstripe suit and those stupid boots, with his coat draped over his arm and sunglasses in the other.

She looks away from him, down at the papers, and his scribble of a signature on all the lines that need it. All the lines that only need hers before the disaster’s over.

“You signed it.” God, she sounds dumb. Saying what she already knows.

He doesn’t say anything, just presses his lips together and starts to turn. Starts to bring his glasses up towards his face.

“Thank you,” she blurts, and he stops, turns his head just a little so he can still see her. The corner of his mouth twists down, and it feels like a painfully familiar picture. Him in his suit, ready to order around the world still it stops turning, her in an old slinky nightgown, hair still tied up in a scarf from when she was asleep. A pretty picture, really, but she just can’t look at it anymore.

“Thank  _ you,”  _ he says eventually. “For sticking it out so long. For…”

His voice fades away, and he turns, slipping the glasses on over his eyes. She knows why he does. She doesn’t stop him again.

After a long while of staring at the door he leaves through, she looks back down to the papers. She could pull out a pen right now, sign them with a flourish. Quit being his wife once and for all. She thinks about it for a moment, thinks about why she didn’t sign the damn things before she turned them over to him.

Maybe it’s her thirst for drama, her yearning to be the center of something, the decider. Maybe she wanted to deal the final blow to the whole mess they’ve made, to be the one that finishes the whole thing off with a single signature.

Maybe she wanted him to rip all of them apart in one fell swoop, as soon as they found his hands.

Maybe the papers were her own kind of ring, thrust towards him, begging  _ please refuse, please plead for my heart, please make me try again, please try again. _

It doesn’t matter, anyways. He’s let her go. Time for her to sign and do the same.

 

She changes her name back, after it’s all over. Persephone Kore.

Daughter of Demeter.  _ Remember her, Clark? Weather lady way back when? Yeah, with Zeus! _

Ex-wife of Hades.  _ The hotel guy, yeah. You know she ran the Songbird for years? The one in New Orleans? Yeah, he was off making the whole rest of his town, she was back home, taking care of things. God, no wonder  _ that  _ shit went downhill. _

No one knows her father.  _ She  _ doesn’t know her father. Frankly, she doesn’t think Demeter does, either.

That’s all she is, now. Wealthy divorcée, frequent patron of the Caduceus Bar. It’s all she needs to be.

She gets a cat, because it sensed her lack of a husband and started wandering outside her door until she surrendered. It’s a sweet little thing, all black except one tiny tuft of white fur on its chest.

She drinks spiked tea with her aunts and cousins, she rolls her eyes when they bring up “that old man of yours” because what else is she supposed to do? Care about him?

(He’s really only four years older than her, he just wears it worse. She’s got lines by her eyes, he’s got them on his forehead and between his eyebrows. They both have plenty of frown lines, though.)

It’s tiring, being divorced. She’s got so much more to determine, so much more to choose. Her evenings used to be about griping at Hades, chipping away at the pile of leftovers from his work parties. Drinking herself sick at night. Coming home. Seeing him in the morning, making herself pitiable just to make him feel something.

Now, there’s no work parties to have leftovers from. She cuts up vegetables and throws them on the grill and tosses them into pasta. She learns how to make pizza. She still drinks, there isn’t much else she knows how to do at night. She watches stupid movies, talks on the phone with her mother. She  _ knows  _ people more, beyond seeing them at the bar.

And yet, it still feels so much lonelier. She isn’t used to having a schedule without regard to his.

They intersect, sometimes. That’s the nature of their lives. Nothing more than seeing each other at the dentist’s, wanting the same watermelon at the grocer’s. They’re peaceable. Things got kinder between them as soon as they signed the papers. But he isn’t changing her day anymore, and she loves it, but she also hates it so much she wants to carve her brain out of her skull so that she doesn’t have to remember being near him every day.

Then, one afternoon, her phone rings.

“Hello, is this Persephone Kore?”

“Yeah,” she says, shifts the phone to one shoulder while she searches through the fridge for some kind of snack.

“You were listed as an emergency contact for a Mister Hades--”

“I’ll be there,” she says, not taking the time to let them finish before she taps the screen to hang up. She tugs on the fur coat she keeps by the door, puts on her boots while she runs outside, and gets about halfway down the block in her car before she realizes that she’s got no idea where he even is.

She heads to their hospital first, the one they’ve been going to since they were barely more than kids. He’s not there, so she heads to the biggest one in town, and sure enough, they point her to a room after she spends god knows how long waiting.

Persephone didn’t really have a guess as to what happened. But she walks in, and there he is, with one of those silly nose casts, and she bursts out laughing.

He looks incredibly displeased. She wonders if it’s her presence, or her laughing. Maybe both.

“Persephone,” he says, all rumbly and low, and she tries to hide her smile.

“Hades.” They stand there for a moment.

“I’m awful sorry they called you. I tried to tell them we’re--”

She cuts him off before he has to say; she knows it hurts to say. “No, you ain’t.”

“Pardon?” He really does look confused, his eyebrows tipping up in the middle and scrunching together.

“You ain’t sorry.” She shrugs one shoulder and sits down in the chair next to his bed. “They called me Kore. You updated it for my name. If you didn’t want me here, you woulda taken me off.”

He swallows, she can see it, and she rolls her eyes. “It’s okay, y’know.”

His shoulders sag. “I’m still sorry.”

“Christ, I just said you don’t need to be. Your nose is  _ busted.  _ What the fuck happened?”

He purses his lips at that, and she’s filled with the happy little notion that it might be a little silly. “You know my assistant, Eurydice.”

“Orpheus’s girl, yeah. Sweet thing.”

Hades angles his eyes up to the ceiling. “There was a late planning meeting. We all went to the store for coffee, snacks, the whole thing. We were going to check out, I saw Eurydice, I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.”

Persephone puts her hand over her eyes. “Hades,  _ no.” _

“She whipped right around and clocked me square in the nose. She’s got a right hook, for damn sure.”

Persephone looks at him for a moment, and saw him crack a smile. “I bled all over the floors.”

She nearly shrieks laughing at that, and he chuckles along. She can’t remember laughing with him at any point within the last few years of their marriage.

He leans back against his hospital pillows, exhaling pointedly. “Lord.” He doesn’t believe in any kind of god. “I  _ am  _ sorry, Sephie.” He hasn’t called her that in years, not even when they were married. “You were probably doing something, weren’t ya?” First time in a while he’s been apologetic he took her away from something.

She tilts her head. “Just being on my own. You ain’t a criminal for this. Everybody’s got a contact.”

He hums, then winces. She’s sure it hurt.

They melt into silence, and then he sits bolt upright. She raises an eyebrow, and he waves his hands, like he’s trying to talk before he remembers how to.

“Eurydice!”

“Your assistant. The cause of this whole thing.”

“They took her into custody, back at the store! She’s probably still at the department, I--”

He starts to stand up, and she puts a hand on his shoulder. “Easy. I can get her.”

The stress seems to flood out of his body. “Thank you, Persephone.”

He says her name so often. He always has. He says it like some people pray.

“Do you want money for her bail?”

She unfreezes, and shakes her head, feeling the curls she wasn’t able to tie back bounce on her cheeks. “I got money, y’know. Besides, I owe her. Girl did the world a great service.” She smiles at him, so she knows she isn’t really serious. “Sometimes ya need a good clock in the nose.”

He smiles back, and she leaves.

Eurydice has a round face, hair that’s a little wavy and puffs out at the end, a sort of hungry look to her even though she doesn’t look like she’s lacking anything. She looks guilty about the whole thing, but when she doesn’t think Persephone’s looking, she giggles to herself.

Persephone thinks that’s about the right response.

Eurydice looks oddly uncomfortable when she sees Persphone’s car, and Persephone snorts. “What, expecting a VW Bus?”

Eurydice scratches at the back of her neck, and Persephone pats her on the shoulder. “It’s alright. Luxury’s an odd thing, ain’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eurydice agrees, and she looks either way down the busy street before she bolts to the passenger’s door, opens it, and scoots in as fast as possible.

Persephone watches the whole thing, amused, before she opens her own door and slides in.

They listen to some game show podcast sort of thing while they drive, and about halfway through, Eurydice turns down the volume and prompts:

“You two are…”

“Divorced. Not furious at each other. But over. We used to be angrier. Now, we ain’t.”

“Oh,” Eurydice says, and she looks at her hands for the rest of the ride.

When they get back to Hades’s room, Eurydice slaps a hand over her mouth, eyes open wide.  _ “Shit.” _

Persephone coughs a laugh, and Hades rolls his eyes. “Girl, if you laugh, I’ll be forced to fire your ass.”

Eurydice blinks. “I’m not…”

“Fired?” Hades finishes. “Lord, no. You think I’d give up the girl who wrangled all my custodial staffs in one, over a broken nose?”

Eurydice pauses, unsure as to how on Earth that question is supposed to be answered. The answer with any other boss, Persephone knows, would be yes. But she and Hades watched together how the simplest thing, like his employees not hating him, transformed their lives. For a bit, at least. A little success can’t fuel thirty-two years of marriage, much less a lifetime.

“No,” Hades says, when it becomes apparent that Eurydice is a bit too confused. “I am, in many regards, a fool, but I know my mistakes when I see them.”

Thirty-two years, and Persephone never saw him own up to something like this.

“Would you have hit me had I not touched you?” Hades asks, and Eurydice, still silent, shakes her head. “Could I have just called out your name?” She nods again, and he spreads out his hands. “There it is. I know for next time.”

She opens her mouth a little, closes it, then opens it again. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, for only breaking my nose. Persephone?” 

She jolts up from the chair. “Mhm?”

“You paid her bail? She’s free to go home?”

Persephone nods. “You two got a court date, though. January seventh, noon sharp. Be there or be jailed.” Eurydice dips her head, and scrambles out the door before they can saddle anything else on her.

“Jumpy,” Persephone says when she knows for sure she’s gone.

Hades clicks his tongue. “She’s heard the horror stories.”

Persphone gives him a look that she hopes comes off as “dry as the Sahara.” “You ain’t that intimidating.”

“You give me no credit. I was a menace.” He smiles a little when she snorts.

“You’re better now.”

“I like to think I’m trying,” Hades says, and  _ she  _ smiles at that before she stands up and brushes down her skirt.

“I’m heading down to the cafeteria. Want something?”

“Persephone,” he says firmly, and when she turns to look at him, he looks closer to the husband she had-- grave, regretful and yet persistent. “You don’t have to stay. Don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

There’s a beat of steady silence, both of them trying to read the other’s mind, even when they haven’t been able to do that for a good decade.

“Nah,” she says eventually. “I’ll wait.”

And she leaves her fur behind on the chair, just so he knows she’s sure.

**Author's Note:**

> are they ever gonna rebuild their relationship? idk. i hope so. i wrote this and i don't know.  
> i sincerely hope you enjoyed that! if you did, pretty please leave me a comment? i'll owe you my life and a peanut butter cliff bar!  
> anyways! if you want even more exclamation points and uhhhhhhs then you can follow me on tumblr @penzyroamin! it's currently a mishmash of newsies and hadestown and the prom and me screaming but it'll probably shift a lot more to hadestown soon if that's more up your alley. also i'll probably be writing more of them. i love these little assholes  
> have a good day, bye!  
> (just realized my end notes literally read like youtuber outros fhsjdhskjdhsjhds. don't forget to like and subscribe gamers)


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